De Lange = DE-pressing

...Sorry for the short notice, but if anyone's interested, this conference is going on in my area very soon.
I'm considering taking off 3 days from work to attend, though with some mixed feelings and reservations which i'll detail
below. First the full announcement, then dissected with commentary below.

-JJR, aka The Aggie Librarian.

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De Lange Conference VI
Emerging Libraries
link: http://www.delange.rice.edu/conferenceVI.cfm

Date: March 5-7, 2007
Host: Rice University via the Fondren Library and Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI)
Site: Alice Pratt Brown Auditorium, Shepherd School, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, Texas

Rice University's 2007 De Lange Conference Aims to Describe How Knowledge Will Be Accessed, Discovered, and Disseminated in the Age of Digital Information

The traditional concept of a library has been rendered obsolescent by the unprecedented confluence of the Internet, changes in scholarly publication models, increasing alliances between the humanities and the sciences, and the rise of large-scale digital library projects. The old ways of organizing and preserving knowledge to transmit our cultural and intellectual heritage have converged with the most advanced technologies of science and engineering and research methodologies. Such rapid and overwhelming changes to a millennia-old tradition pose significant challenges not only to university research libraries but to every citizen. If the traditional library is undergoing a profound metamorphosis, it is not clear what new model will take its place. More information has been produced in the last several years than in the entire previous history of humanity, and most of this has been in digital format. Libraries are not storage places any more; they are less and less a place. The critical issues now include: How can that information be efficiently accessed and used? How do we extract knowledge from such an abundance of often poorly organized information? How might these enormous digital resources affect our concept of identity, our privacy, and the way we conduct business in the new century? Insight from many disciplines and perspectives is requisite to begin to understand this phenomenon to identify ways to help chart a future course.

The De Lange 2007 Conference will examine the transformational influences these astonishing emerging libraries may entail. A planning committee, led by Rice University's Fondren Library and Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI), now seeks a rich mix of subject specialists with unique perspectives who will enliven and enrich this exploration. The De Lange Conference will also have a historical perspective as well as be forward-looking and self-reflective; the conference will reveal that the emerging library is of enormous consequence and relevant to the rethinking of fundamental assumptions that structure our understanding of the world and facilitate new discovery.

The following topics will be addressed by some of the world's foremost thinkers:

1. The history of knowledge organization; major periods during which the organization of knowledge substantially changed, and the implications of those changes
2. The rise and evolution of academic disciplines and their structure during the last 150 years: Why does the university look like it does today? Why is the library organized like it is today?
3. Current disciplinary changes in method and practice: how knowledge is acquired, transmitted, and used in fields such as genomics, proteomics and computational biology
4. The emergence of genuinely hybrid disciplines (archaerometrics; archaeogenetics; music informatics; 3-D laser capture/analysis of art history objects)
5. Large-scale (global) collaborative research (Sloan Digital Sky Survey; Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO); Fermilab particle research; Large Hadron project)
6. Large-scale digital library projects (US, Australia, UK, EU, China): goals and implications
7. Does the current organization of departments and programs inhibit progress?
8. Copyright and intellectual property in the digital age
9. The emerging library as the new (virtual) campus
10. The rise of undergraduate research and its effects on libraries and curricula
11. Exemplary innovation: digital libraries and teaching (Connexions)
12. What the future might hold (wide-open possibilities, pro and con)
13. The end of traditional scholarly publishing
14. The economics of information: Who will pay for these major changes in tradition?

It is expected that this conference will appeal to an audience representing a very broad range of background and interests.

Conference Dates

Day One: Monday, March 5, 2007
Day Two: Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Day Three: Wednesday, March 7, 2007
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It...looks important, so part of me feels the need to go; but like I said, lots of mixed feelings for me about what the above says:

Things like:
>> The traditional concept of a library has been rendered obsolescent by the unprecedented confluence of the Internet, changes in scholarly publication models, increasing alliances between the humanities and the sciences, and the rise of large-scale digital library projects.<<

Oh really? Quite a few VERY sweeping assertions there (without evidence offered to back it up, notice)....

>>The old ways of organizing and preserving knowledge to transmit our cultural and intellectual heritage...<<

That would be, um, printed books-in-libraries, for the most part. Other media to a lesser extent, but mostly printed books & manuscripts.

>>have converged with the most advanced technologies of science and engineering and research methodologies. Such rapid and overwhelming changes to a millennia-old tradition pose significant challenges not only to university research libraries but to every citizen. If the traditional library is undergoing a profound metamorphosis, it is not clear what new model will take its place. More information has been produced in the last several years than in the entire previous history of humanity, and most of this has been in digital format.<<<

Information mass-production does NOT necessarily equal a net increase in human WISDOM, however.

>>Libraries are not storage places any more; they are less and less a place.<<

Like Hell they aren't!

>> The critical issues now include: How can that information be efficiently accessed and used? How do we extract knowledge from such an abundance of often poorly organized information? How might these enormous digital resources affect our concept of identity, our privacy, and the way we conduct business in the new century? Insight from many disciplines and perspectives is requisite to begin to understand this phenomenon to identify ways to help chart a future course.<<

As a side note, I notice that very few actual librarians are presenting at this thing, except, of course, for "visionary" administrators...


>>The De Lange 2007 Conference will examine the transformational influences these astonishing emerging libraries may entail. A planning committee, led by Rice University's Fondren Library and Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI), now seeks a rich mix of subject specialists with unique perspectives who will enliven and enrich this exploration.<<

Subtext: But those Humanistic librarians emphasizing the continued importance of print literacy decidedly NOT welcome, however.

>> The De Lange Conference will also have a historical perspective as well as be forward-looking and self-reflective; the conference will reveal that the emerging library is of enormous consequence and relevant to the rethinking of fundamental assumptions that structure our understanding of the world and facilitate new discovery.<<

Code wording for renewed Neoliberal assault on public sector/public service libraries, I think, buried behind nice, flowery, euphemistic language.

>>The following topics will be addressed by some of the world's foremost thinkers:
1. The history of knowledge organization; major periods during which the organization of knowledge substantially changed, and the implications of those changes<<

It's really too bad Neil Postman is no longer around to address (harangue, symbolically eviscerate) these people.

>> 2. The rise and evolution of academic disciplines and their structure during the last 150 years: Why does the university look like it does today? Why is the library organized like it is today?<<

Any chance of a discussion about Class struggle emerging here? Somehow I kind of doubt it. Anyone wanting to discuss Paulo Freire please exit the building now.

>> 7. Does the current organization of departments and programs inhibit progress?<<

Progress as defined by whom? Progress toward what, exactly? One of the GOOD things Postmodernism DID teach me was to be more attentive to asking questions like this and taking fewer things at face value.

>> 12. What the future might hold (wide-open possibilities, pro and con)<<

That's "Con" in the double entendre sense, mind you.

>> 13. The end of traditional scholarly publishing

Read: Neoliberal ideological assault redux.

>> 14. The economics of information: Who will pay for these major changes in tradition?

Why the public of course. Socialize risk, privatize gain, as in the usual Neoliberal paradigm. We pay, they profit. Do you get it already?


...Now, in fairness, there probably are some worthwile talks being given in the midst off all the technology hype.
For example, I freely admit, I don't know nearly enough about any of these to have much of anything to say:
-------------------
3. Current disciplinary changes in method and practice: how knowledge is acquired, transmitted, and used in fields such as genomics, proteomics and computational biology
4. The emergence of genuinely hybrid disciplines (archaerometrics; archaeogenetics; music informatics; 3-D laser capture/analysis of art history objects)
5. Large-scale (global) collaborative research (Sloan Digital Sky Survey; Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO); Fermilab particle research; Large Hadron project)
6. Large-scale digital library projects (US, Australia, UK, EU, China): goals and implications
=======================

...Thus I don't want to come across as a total Luddite curmudgeon, but with the exception of the few talking points directly above, I generally don't like the whole tone of this conference. Maybe I was naive, but it seemed like for a brief, bright, shining moment in the late 1990s we humanistic librarians had pushed back hard enough against the all-digital, all-the-time crowd, showed them up for the foolish extremists they were, and that library discourse moved away from the patently insane talk of "paperless societies", etc.

I guess with Bush's 2nd term well underway, it was only a matter of time before those forces regrouped and renewed their blustery assault.

There's no separating the technology being pushed from the ideologies doing the pushing, and those come from information-capitalist entities, seeking to undermine social(ist) formations like public-service libraries, even traditional academic libraries in universities....all part of the larger general assault on higher education.

Part of me wants to go and ask akward and embarassing questions of some of the more blatant presenters...but on the whole I wonder if going at all is kind of an exercise in sado-masochism...since it's likely to mainly depress the hell out of me. And I'm likely to be dismissed outright I get to heavy with the Class analysis and critique of sacred cow capitalism. Plus considering all of the above in light of the implications of post-peak oil production energy scarcity, renders nearly all of what will be said at the conference quite irrelevant in the long term.

My dad, when he read the conference intro above said "all of that is so true...." (I wanted to pull my hair out); he also joked "why bother going, it says you (as librarian) are obsolete.."

Why go indeed. Well, might make for good blog fodder anyway--I don't know.
But it can't be healthy for (non-Systems) librarians to attend too many of these kinds of conferences. To have it reinforced into your head "you are outmoded and irrelevant unless you are high-tech 24-7..."; Bollocks to that.

I just haven't made up my mind yet, if I'm going or not. "Emerging Libraries"?--more like "Submerging & Subverting Libraries"

--The Aggie Librarian